Halo 5 Multiplayer and Balancing to be Addressed and Improved, Says 343i

We still don't know whether 'Halo for Xbox One' is Halo 5 proper, as it hasn't been properly announced as such just yet, but 343 Industries is already putting the feelers out for feedback on where it went wrong with Halo 4. It all started with the developer's Design Director, Brad Welch initiating a Twitter conversation about Halo multiplayer.

"Halo MP is a challenging beast. Part of my love for it is the Quake arena tradition. We didn't service this so well in Halo 4," Welch tweeted, leading to a number of responses and exhanges.

One fan noted that it was too easy to max Halo 4's multiplayer progression, to which Welch replied: "Very fair point. I actually designed that system and feel bad that it tapped out. Major surgery pulled me out of H4 a bit early." Welch then added: "There was a few moving parts there that caused that, but we've fed all the stuff we didn't think went well into future plans."

A more visible way of conveying a player's skill and ranking was also called for by another fan, to which Welch responded: "So visible skill is what you want, right? Tell me what your favorite skill ranking system in any game!" Halo 2 and 3 were then cited as examples. "Same basic feedback we hear a lot from H4," Welch stated.

Later on, Welch then addressed Halo 4's multiplayer map packs, reviewing the balance of DLC maps. "Not great, yeah. We have to plan DLC early, so ultimately I didn’t balance internal, external & DLC maps well enough," he said. "Plenty of decisions are on me. Big games are tough. We’ll improve next time."

Looking ahead to Halo 5, Welch offered some tantalising tidbits on what 343 Industries is shooting for. "Going to make whatever future 60fps, dedi server Halo we may make as awesome as possible to as many fans as possible." And as for multiplayer? "Let’s just say our internal MP team is much bigger than Halo 4."